Richard Spencer is one of the Daily Telegraph's Middle East correspondents. Married with three children, he was previously news editor, and then China correspondent for six years. He is based in Cairo.

Voices of Reform in China (4)

Four years ago, a figure with close links to people arrested and jailed after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 issued a manifesto for political change in China.

China's prime minister Wen JiabaoÂ

Here are the principles he said should underlay reform:

1. Reform should include both economic and political restructuring. Without political reform, economic reform will not be successful.2. In essence, (political reform means) integrating the political leadership, the rule of law in the conduct of public affairs, and (ensuring) the people's control as masters of their own affairs.

And here was his manifesto for bringing it about:1. Develop democracy to safeguard people's democratic rights and to respect and protect their human rights.2. Improve the legal system: this will require better legislation, better administration, and more judicial reform.3. The country must be run according to law – ie, strengthening the institutions, standards and procedures underlying its politics.4. The government must be made accountable to the people.

Not a bad draft, huh? I have paraphrased, but not much, as you can see by reading the original here (do a word find on the first mention of "political reform" to get to the right place).

The only substantial editing is that in (4) the original was "the government must be placed under the supervision of the people", which is a common Chinese phraseology. I accept that accountability is a slightly more specific concept than "supervision" but "supervision" doesn't quite work in English. The fact that it reminds us of being in school detention probably isn't coincidental but it's still off-putting.

So, who was this dangerous radical? Why, as some of you will have guessed by now, it was China's very own prime minister, Wen Jiabao, an aide to disgraced late Party leader Zhao Ziyang in 1989 and colleague of Bao Tong, another aide, who was jailed. These comments were part of an interview with the Washington Post in November 2003 – now behind a paywall but kindly made available online by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Now Prime Minister Wen is not going beyond the Party line, which on occasion claims to believe all these things, but interprets them differently from us in the west so that "democracy" is not incompatible with one-party rule.

But the people I quoted earlier in the week do not put a precise definition of democracy forward either. There is no specific demand for "western democracy", which is itself rarely defined by those who use the term, often as a subtle form of criticism.

I was struck by Bianxiangbianqiao's wondering if Japan-style democracy was suitable for China – after all, it's been pretty much under the sway of one party for 40 years or more.

BXBQ is usually very critical of western concern as to whether China will become a democracy or not, here and on other blogs. Yet he is not alone in thinking of Japan and other Asian models. I am always reminded of a fascinating evening I spent with a bunch of students at about the same time Mr Wen was giving his interview, asking them about politics. There was the usual wide range of views, but the most strident couple of voices – strident, I guess, at least in part because they knew they were in tune with forward-looking Party insiders – urged an eventual "guided democracy" akin to Singapore and Japan, with their dominant political parties, controlled by an elderly elite, but nevertheless periodically subject to elections.

China will develop a democracy of its own sort, such people, including Mr Wen, say, though they are reluctant to give a time-scale. I think we can all agree that gradual change to such a thing might be a great improvement in principle, though Singapore gives a lot of people the judders and, of course, with 4 million people on one small island is something of a different kettle of fish to China.

But it's reasonable to ask how such a change would happen. In terms of (1) to (4) above, both these places have more in common with the West than with China at the moment.

One looks to the great set-piece speeches for clues. You will, in my opinion, be hard put to find any such clues in President Hu Jintao's speech to the Party Congress last week.

That's up to him, and the Chinese people, as BXBQ and others are right to say. But you surely can't blame us for being interested?